Politically Correct or just plain stupidity?

Living Room Discuss, Politically Correct or just plain stupidity? at Community forum; As some of you may know, I teach Physical Education. The kids are mainly aged 12 to 18 years. Today I found a letter on my desk when I went into work; The letter was from the department of education. Obviously I can’t share the letter with you, but the

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    Dee's Avatar
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    As some of you may know, I teach Physical Education. The kids are mainly aged 12 to 18 years.

    Today I found a letter on my desk when I went into work; The letter was from the department of education. Obviously I can’t share the letter with you, but the jist of the letter was as follows.
    We are considering removing competitive sports from the curriculum. We are doing this because some children who are not so good at sports may suffer cytological problems by being made feel inferior to the children who are good at sports.
    What’s next, abolish math’s exams, just incase the children who are not so good at math’s feel inferior?

    Has the world gone mad? Or do you agree that being competitive is to the detriment of society.

    Note
    I DO NOT want to see this thread deteriorate into political arguments or flaming.
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    I think it's insane. Mainly for 2 reasons:

    1. children who aren't good at (competetive) sports know that and will most likely accept that, as they never have been used to it being different
    2. part of growing up is realizing you can't be good at everything.. so if (competitive) sport aren't your thing, you can either try very hard to be somebody or accept it

    And euh.. I know how it feels. I've never been good at sports, esp competetive sports. I guess that's why I choose fitness over football. Did I ever feel bad about it? Not really. I remember back when I was a teenager we used to play lots of these sports (football, volley, basketball). It hardly happened that I got a ball... but when I did, I always screwed it up, resulting in the other (better) players yelling at me. Did I care? Not at all.. it's always been like that. Maybe there's a job for the teacher there... let him/her handle the situation if it escalates..

    Anyhow... you know my opinion

    I sometimes wonder how people that make such decisions think. I know for a fact that the highschool I went to, nowadays abolished World war II lessons (mainly history lessons), because they don't want the kids to be known with the nazi stuff. How insane is that...?
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    I agree with Dee-ehn... that proposition is ridiculous.

    Maybe they want physical education class to turn into coloring the ground with chalk instead of playing sports?
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    Wow!
    When I read that I assumed you were in the US. We've had that happen here.
    Anyone familiar with 'Dodge Ball'?
    Then I noticed you were in Scotland and I was a little shocked. I guess the insanity is everywhere.
    This is so insane. They want to do away with 'Honor Rolls' because some students will feel bad. (I think it's the parents)
    Some parents have asked that their children not be listed on them because they may get picked on for being smart.

    I fear it will get worse before (if) it gets better...
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    Sure its not that they dont have enough funds to pay gym teachers perhaps?
    Then, making up a story like this isnt the best cover.

    If it were a school for challenged kids then I'd agree that it might not be suitable to have competitions but 18 year olds that cant handle being beat? Weak.
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    It is a competitive world and the lack of competition will leave these kids unprepared for adulthood. The workplace is a rat race, to find a job you must go head-to-head with dozens, if not hundreds of others who want that job or promotion. In every avenue in life, from finding a mate to the market place one usually has to beat someone else to the punch to get what they want.
    In the U.S. this a problem too, some people think grading students is humiliating to those who score poorly, they want to get rid of grades and testing. How is a teacher supposed to know if his/her message is reaching a student if you can't test them? Competition makes a person strive to be better, to accomplish more, to achieve new heights. Why shouldn't a person who works or plays or studies harder be recognized for his/her achievements? Isn't this a slap at them? Doesn't this kill their incentive to do better?
    Sports, in particular, has many positive rewards besides just competition. There is physical fitness, too many children are obese these days. It get's kids out into the fresh air and gives them something to do to stay out of trouble. What will children do with after school activities, stay inside and play video games, go outside and get into trouble with their bored friends, or... do drugs.
    Ok, that's my little rant. Obviously, this is not the first time that this subject has come up with me. It is a pet peeve.
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    I find the kids in class who are perhaps not so good at sports compete very well at there own level and get as much enjoyment as anyone else.

    But by its nature, sports is competative.

    Costs could come into it i guess, but removing P.E. completely will require a change of law in Scotland, as all children of school age must receive P.E.
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    It appears pretty unanimous here that the education management cult is going in the wrong direction.

    So who are all these people who think that weakening the next generations is a good idea? A few generations ago you heard it said that those who do, do, and those who can't do, teach. Can it be that teachers have a special affinity with the incompetent?

    After all, they say that they need higher salaries because the current salaries don't attract capable people. Which, of course, means that the current stock of teachers is comprised of incapable people. But being so, they wouldn't recognize the insult they've delivered to themselves.

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    plain stupidity...

    i wonder if there have been any specific complaints given by kids or parents to initiate this potential move...
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    In some more liberal areas of the USA they have stopped taking score at T-Ball & PeeWee baseball games for the same reasons, the politically correct movement is trying to change everything, and has had pretty good luck with it so far. George Carlin calls this pattern "The Pussification of America."
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    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ricoman
    It is a competitive world and the lack of competition will leave these kids unprepared for adulthood. The workplace is a rat race, to find a job you must go head-to-head with dozens, if not hundreds of others who want that job or promotion. In every avenue in life, from finding a mate to the market place one usually has to beat someone else to the punch to get what they want.
    In the U.S. this a problem too, some people think grading students is humiliating to those who score poorly, they want to get rid of grades and testing. How is a teacher supposed to know if his/her message is reaching a student if you can't test them? Competition makes a person strive to be better, to accomplish more, to achieve new heights. Why shouldn't a person who works or plays or studies harder be recognized for his/her achievements? Isn't this a slap at them? Doesn't this kill their incentive to do better?
    Sports, in particular, has many positive rewards besides just competition. There is physical fitness, too many children are obese these days. It get's kids out into the fresh air and gives them something to do to stay out of trouble. What will children do with after school activities, stay inside and play video games, go outside and get into trouble with their bored friends, or... do drugs.
    Ok, that's my little rant. Obviously, this is not the first time that this subject has come up with me. It is a pet peeve.
    This is exactly what I think, but could not have said it with more eloquence...

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DJMind
    In some more liberal areas of the USA they have stopped taking score at T-Ball & PeeWee baseball games for the same reasons, the politically correct movement is trying to change everything, and has had pretty good luck with it so far. George Carlin calls this pattern "The Pussification of America."
    Tapes of George Carlin should be studied and taught in 'Basic Common Sense 101'. He is the Confucius of our generation and I worship his teachings.
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  12. Old Posted:
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    This type of thing has been getting progressively worse in the US and is very well documented. The worst example I ever saw was the text book that "celebrated" alternative spelling and teachers who gave high marks on spelling tests for "creativity".

    I also work in a school, fortunately this madness has not yet filtered down to the very low grades, but I recently spoke with a textbook writer who has quit because of the move toward diversity. She just couldn't deal with another mandate for a native american, female in a wheelchair.
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    Being politcally correct often means being stupid or acting stupid.

    In South Korea, students with IQ over 150 are mostly forced to study with students with IQ under 80. And they learn from the same teachers, in same classrooms, exactly identical sets of exams, classes, etc. Even the food and beating are equally applied because either shorter or taller is wrong and something done by one student in a 60-student class is also something done by the entire group. So I spent 10 years in schools studing under teachers and textbooks created for a few dictators in classrooms dominated by students who have nothing to do but harassing bright classmates. All schools and classes also have the same average scores. When some excel, they make it equal to the rest again. I was studing the same level grammar and vocabulary of the English language in the first year of high school and also in college that I studied years before because most of the other students got under 60-80% scores (out of 100.)

    A difference is that that kind of "equilibrium" policies are not that strictly applied to sports (which is called Body Raise in South Korea.)
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    Political correctness gone mad (mind you, it's well known that "politically correct" translated into plain english means "factually wrong" ).

    Regrettably, for some time there has been a credo amongst many "educationists" in the western world for some time that not only should all children be given equal opprotunity but that outcomes also should be equal. [Of course, equality of outcome is insane because the only way that can be achieved is by reducing everyone with any ability at all down to the lowest common denominator.]

    Needless to say, where competitive sports are involved, equality of outcome is impossible because those children who are stronger, faster and/or have superior hand/eye co-ordination not only will play to win (which is just basic human nature) but will do so in most cases.

    The result of that though is that the loopies who want equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities want competitive sports banned because, no matter how hard they try, they can't ensure that those with no ability at all will have equal results with those who have some talent.
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    It's ridiculous, I teach as a part time job and I recently got a similar type of letter, not for activity classes but other stimpulations.

    Personally I feel the worl dis becomming too overwhelmed with the idea of hurting the feelings of the minority to a ridiculous level.

    As DN said, part of life is figuring out what you are and are not good at. It's not to baby you and sppon feed you so that you grow up not knowing how to wipe your own @ss.
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    I guess that we can in future forget about our Football Teams competeing at the highest Levels, the same goes for our other Athletes, Sportsman etc, as a Brit living abroad i really do shake my head when i hear of some decisions that are made using the umbrella "Politically Correct" in Britain.

    How many Kids who were not so good at any particular sport have improved themselves simply to prove a point that they can do it, learning to be competative is as has been mentioned usefull in later life wether Studying/Work/Sport/Illness etc how are kids going to achieve anything when they cant learn if you want it that you need to go for it.
  17. Old Posted:
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    Not plain, but utter stupidity.

    Quote:
    We are considering removing competitive sports from the curriculum. We are doing this because some children who are not so good at sports may suffer cytological problems by being made feel inferior to the children who are good at sports.
    Sports are indeed competition games. You will always have winners and losers. Someone who's very bad at the Cooper Test (like me) will have a joy playing other games (like i did with tabe tennis, volleyball, soccer, etc).

    Second of all, sports can be played in teams. It can form discipline, team spirit and leadership.

    Teaching kids not to do sports because they can feel inferior is the chicken way out. At least give them the chance to build up some stamina and a will to do their best.

    I'll admit i hated most sports at school, but looking back i think it was a good experience for my self-esteem.

    I don't know which political idiot came up with this idea, but he's the loser here.


    In a way this is censorship. You have to teach kids about things, not propagate it into their heads, but have them at least understand things. Censorship only raises more curiousity and one-track-thinking. learn dammit!
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    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lame pseudonym

    So who are all these people who think that weakening the next generations is a good idea?
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    This reminds me of schools that want to convert to uniforms and not let kids wear what they want. One of the main reasons for this they claim is that children who come from rich families will wear more expesnive close; thus making the poorer children feel bad. This again, falls under the same thing of competitiveness in sports. There will always be someone out there that is better than somebody else at any given thing.

    I think the whole thing is rediculous. I never was much of the PE type in school because I'm not very good at sports. But I didn't go home and cry about it every night that other kids are better at sports than me. It doens't bother me at all. Why, because I know that I am better than them at something, whether it's computers, math, or anything else. And that's just the way things are in life. There will always be competition among people in almost every respect of life. And for them to try to "dumb" things down is not the right solution and is in fact detrimental to the student(s).
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    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kwkard
    This reminds me of schools that want to convert to uniforms and not let kids wear what they want. One of the main reasons for this they claim is that children who come from rich families will wear more expesnive close; thus making the poorer children feel bad. This again, falls under the same thing of competitiveness in sports. There will always be someone out there that is better than somebody else at any given thing.
    We have this painting at work. 6 yellow people are facing the back (you see their backs only) and one blue person is facing the front with a huge smile on his face.

    It resembles the need for unity in certain places (because it can be life-threatening-important to know who is who in certain situations) and the equivalent need to think outside the box. The need to be different. Both are necessary for a healthy organisation to continue.
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    UTTER STUPIDITY just cos you aint good at sport dont mean you dont enjoy it i was never outstanding at anysport but liked to play competitivness is a basic instinct we all like to think we are better than others at somethink (can you delete everyones post count because i feel inferior i dont want anyone on here better than me ) god the world will be a boring place when we all have the same cloths,hair,interests,cars,food etc and no Modelatols
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    Well here in Japan kids from 1 to 6 grade (6-12 years old) each year have a sports day where classes and kids compete. 1 event is 50 or 100m running depending on age. Now some schools over here when the 1-3rd grade kids run say lets all run together that all kids are first. Other schools have stopped to say who won the race and at some schools kids are running holding each others hand....Other schools have stopped such competitions and are only doing team sports. But this is as far as i know only with kids under 10 years of age. I dont know since when this is done but I can tell that about 20 years ago when I was at elementary school we did not have such stupid rules and I cant remember of any kid going crazy or whatever because he/she lost at such an event. But doing this kind of thing with 15 or even 18 year olds is BS. I dont know about Scotland but in many countries (like Germany) with 18 years you are an adult. And I can not imagine an 18 year old getting some kind of complex because he/she is bad at Sports. On the other hand there are schools (I think they are called Steiner Schools) where there are no grades given at all.
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    HarrySmiith (CDFreaks Resident)
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    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dee-27


    Has the world gone mad? Or do you agree that being competitive is to the detriment of society.

    Yes But I also think that this particular problem is only part of a greater problem - the blame culture. As a teacher you will be aware of problems relating to school trips ( or the increasing lack of them), the care of young children ( be careful to have another adult present so that acusations can not be made)...

    Basically an attitude has developed which says that whenever something bad happens someone must be to blame and compensation should be payable.
    The fear generated by this attitude then leads to everyone trying to protect themselves. So what do we get ? Education officials being concerned that at some future date they will be sued ( thanks America) for the psychological damage done to a child a school.

    30 years ago I used to be a Finacial Adviser, advising on Pensions, Protection, Investments, Mortgages, ............... Today I limit my advice to Investments and issue vast quanties of warnings, caveats explaining that I will not take responsibility for this and that. My work is dominated by compliance issues to the detriment of the public.

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  24. Old Posted:
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    LOL. Psychological problems of feeling inferior. Oh goodness, that's... just... wrong.

    Anyway, since this topic has kinda drifted towards the competitive aspect of sports, I think I should offer a different view here about competition in general.

    [note the change of topic from the claim of feeling psychologically inferior to the competitive nature of sports]

    I would not be so quick to draw the connection between sports and academics, as sports are inherently competitive with a loser and a winner, whereas in academics, there are no losers or winners unless you do something like go to a Math Bee or the ACM's Intercollegiate Programming Competition. Unless students get together and share their grades and brag about who got the best score, there is no competition (okay, let's leave out MIT admissions and keep in mind that the vast majority of people attend public colleges/universities where you are admitted if you pass a certain set of requirements and not if you came out on top of a pack of applicants). In academics, the goal is to learn and to develop and not to make winners and losers, and I think that, fundamentally, the two are thus very different and should not be compared.

    I should also add that I think that excessive academic competition is not a great thing. Case in point, in my high school, the desire to get into the top 10 (in a class of 500) is so intense for a certain group of people that they will pick their classes based on how easy it would be to get an A (and whether or not it has the Honors grade point bonus) and not based on what their own interests are and what would be most meaningful. This is even worse in colleges, where competition has brought about grade inflation (from institutions that want to get their students the best post-grad status, which will in turn boost their own institutional status; this happens even at Harvard, as indicated by various articles in the Crimson). This is especially true for pre-med students. In the USA, many pre-med students will take easy classes (a lot of wish-washy humanities classes) and avoid the tough things (like hard science; ironic because medicine is a sort of science, although very much watered down like all the other biological fields) just so that they can inflate their grade and stay competitive. It's sad because they're not really developing themselves and their potential, and it's all the result of a shift in certain areas of academia from a spirit of learning and making oneself better to a spirit of competition. In the areas where competition is not so stiff, like in theoretical physics and mathematics, that's where people are really putting in the effort and that's where academia is still academia. I know all this from personal experience.

    But academia is kinda a special case, you might say. What about the real world? It's a tough world out there, no? But is modern "competition" really what Adam Smith had in mind when he wrote the Wealth of Nations? Probably not. Well, modern capitalism is nothing like it, either. But competition as envisioned by Smith is much more abstract, and it amounts more to people just doing their best, and if they fail, they move onto different fields and industries where "doing their best" yields better results. The more conscious competition that we have today where companies and people plot and strategize on how to defeat their competition is not what Smith had in mind. If all that plotting and strategizing resulted in people and companies focusing on improving themselves so that the market will favor them, then that's great. But conscious competition leads more often than not to a spirit of "winning the game" and "defeating the opponent" and not of "let's internally improve". Abusive use of intellectual property (there are non-abusive uses, too, as Jefferson envisioned) to stiffle competition is probably the example of this that you are all familiar with.

    Ultimately, competition is good only if it is constructive. Sports, I think, is not such a form of competition because it tends to foster a winner-loser mentality. Not all people will treat sports as a beat-the-other-guy thing and treat it as a improve-myself thing, but a large number of people will treat it as such. So if sports are removed but are replaced by other things that reinforce a culture of try-your-very-best, then I'm all for that (even if it is "it's okay to fail, IF you tried your very best"; as long as "try your best" is somewhere in the culture/message that is being reinforced). But I think that some of the rationale being used today by misguided educators today do not pass that test. It is one thing to shield people from "competition" because of the destructive nature of some forms of it. But it's another to shield people from it because it will show them that there is something that they're not good at, for if you don't know your strengths and weaknesses, how can you improve?
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  25. Old Posted:
    ήояту's Avatar
    ήояту (CD Freaks Nanny)
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    Competitiveness is good for development and general well being

    This was the norm in this part of the UK around 10 years ago
    I am not sure if this is still the case as i no longer have children of school age, but i will enquire from work mates who do and let you know!
    Damm silly if you ask me
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